Associated Press

The headline New York Times (HT Clay Waters at NewsBusters) after yesterday's job report was: "U.S. Economy Gains Steam as 200,000 Jobs Are Added." At the Associated Press: "Nation adds 200,000 jobs in December hiring surge." Telling millions of news consumers that it's so doesn't make it so.

Indiana House of Representatives Democrats could incur fines for every day that they refuse to show up to work. Democratic caucus members have threatened to fail to report for duty as a protest against a Republican bill that would make Indiana a right-to-work state. Reporting the story for the Associated Press today, Tom LoBianco (available here on Twitter) heavily weighed down his report…

An unbylined item appearing at the Associated Press shortly after midnight (captured in full as a graphic here due to its brevity; for fair use and discussion purposes) crowed about how President Barack Obama "is looking to boost summer job prospects for kids," has "gotten commitments for nearly 180,000 youth employment opportunities for next summer," and only says that "Many of the positions…

A few readers asked me for my reaction to Derek Kravitz's December 23 report at the Associated Press on new-home sales. I thought that it was reasonably good, but felt that his leaving open in readers' minds the idea that this year's sales could conceivably top last year's was in bad form. I was too kind. Based on data available elsewhere, Kravitz should have known (and maybe did) that…

In 1984, an Associated Press writer covering the Democratic primaries wrote that "In a presidential contest dominated by concerns over the economy, inflation, and unemployment, the Democratic candidates have been loath to acknowledge the extent to which Carter administration policies contributed to those problems. Democrats have also controlled Congress for most of the past three decades, which…

On December 31, 2003, looking ahead to the upcoming 2004 election year, an Associated Press reporter -- I think it would have been Jennifer Loven at the time -- wrote about how George W. Bush was going to spend as much of the next 10-plus months as possible figuring that "he no longer needs Congress to promote his agenda." Therfore, he would use "aggressive campaign fundraising and use…

There are quite a few problems with Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar's December 28 coverage ("New fee coming for medical effectiveness research") concerning a new fee (i.e., tax) which will imposed on health insurance companies for each person they cover starting tomorrow. Several times (twice in the body and once as seen above in the headline), the story refers to the assessment as a "medical…

Jean H. Lee's Friday afternoon report at the Associated Press on the omnipresence of images of the late Kim Jong Il throughout North Korea reads more like an audition to be the communist nation's next propaganda minister than a wire service report. Not once does she call the late tyrant a tyrant, or for that matter even a Communist. If you didn't know any better, you would think you're…

There are press memes which won't go away no matter what, and no matter how often disproven. One, repeated in an Associated Press report a couple of weeks ago as our troops were about to leave Iraq, claimed that "No WMD were ever found" there. The truth: Yes they were — along with 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium found in Iraq after Saddam was overthrown, specifically “the stuff that can…

In an item which still has a breaking news tag, Josh Funk at the Associated Press (saved here for future reference, fair use, and discussion purposes) call retiring Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson a "centrist," and almost seemed to mourn over "an increasingly polarizing climate" which made it clear that Nelson's reelection would have been a steep uphill fight. Of course, there was no mention of the…

At the New York Times Thursday morning, reporter Choe Sang-Hun's covering the funeral for late North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il made it clear to readers that it "The funeral, and the mourning, appeared to have been meticulously choreographed by the government." Meanwhile, over at the Associated Press (saved here at host for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes), a story involving…

At the Associated Press on Friday, reporter Jim Kuhnhenn provided yet another reason why characterizing the wire service as The Administration's Press is perfectly appropriate. In wake of President Obama's use of a "signing statement" objecting on constitutional grounds to congressionally-imposed "restrictions on his ability to transfer detainees from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo…

A month ago, Aya Batrawy at the Associated Press's Egyptian bureau described those who ransacked the Israeli embassy in Cairo as "protesters," and absurdly asserted in the face of contrary evidence I was able to find in about five minutes that "the historic 1979 peace treaty with Israel ... has never had the support of ordinary Egyptians." Last week, in the wake of the burning -- more like…

I hope that the nominations for dumbest wire service item of the year are still open, because the December 20 report by Associated Press Education Writer Jay Pope on the alleged negative impact of a successful college football team on the grades of male students on campus must be placed in the running. Based on an eight-year study of grades by economists at just one school, the University of…